BENGHAZI FOCUS SHOULD BE ON OBAMA, NOT PETRAEUS

As of late Friday afternoon, there was no certainty about what former CIA Director David Petraeus said in closed-door testimony to a House committee about the terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 and how long it was before the Obama administration knew it was a terrorist attack. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., says Petraeus testified he knew soon after the attack that it was coordinated by terrorists, and not a spontaneous mob reacting to an anti-Muslim video, and that the CIA’s views were modified by some unknown third party to downplay this assumption before U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice delivered her deceptive talking points in five national TV interviews on Sept. 16. King also said that Petraeus’ story has changed since his previous congressional testimony two months ago.

But while Petraeus’ testimony is deeply relevant, the focus shouldn’t be on him. It should be on what President Obama knew and when he knew it, and whether he sought to conceal and distort crucial facts to help his re-election campaign.

In a Sept. 24 TV interview, the president was directly asked whether the attack was terrorist in nature. He ducked the question.

In a Sept. 25 speech at the United Nations, the president made repeated references to the anti-Muslim video in a way that clearly implied it was responsible for the attack.

We don’t need to hear from Petraeus to figure out what evidence shows the president knew.

On Sept. 11, real-time intelligence showed no protesters outside the consulate. The State Department told the White House that the Ansar al-Sharia terrorist group was taking credit for the attack on Facebook and Twitter.

On Sept. 13, CNN reported that top State Department officials had concluded the assault was a “clearly planned military-type attack” that wasn’t related to the inflammatory video. The State Department is run by Secretary Hillary Clinton, who reports directly to the president.

On Sept. 14, Roll Call reported that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had told lawmakers that it had all the trappings of a terrorist attack. Panetta reports directly to the president.

Apart from what U.S. officials were saying, from Sept. 12 on, Libyan officials described it over and over as a terrorist attack. Mohamed Magariaf, Libya’s president, told NPR that it was “preposterous” to blame the coordinated attack on a video protest that suddenly escalated.

Finally, on Sept. 26, White House press secretary Jay Carney said it was now the president’s view that a terrorist attack had claimed the life of Ambassador Chris Stevens, security agents Tyrone Woods of Imperial Beach and Glen Doherty of Encinitas, and information officer Sean Smith, who grew up in San Diego.

Yet Barack Obama has had the gall to bristle for weeks at the idea he or his administration was hiding something. The families of Stevens, Woods, Doherty and Smith deserve immensely better – and so do the American people.